Spiritual Evolution

Reality is more complex than we would like.
If we insist upon it making sense,
we will find ourselves despairing.
Reality cannot be neatly packaged ...
Reality is all that is, and this is often at odds
with what we imagine it should be.
Rabbi Yannai, an early Jewish sage 

 

 

    “Always keep an open mind about whatever you experience. Try not to jump to conclusions. Simply keep observing & investigating your experience thoroughly & continuously. Jumping to conclusions will prevent your understanding from deepening.”
    Ashin Tejaniya “Don’t Look Down on the Defilements – They Will Laugh at You." http://sayadawutejaniya.org/teachings/

      In medicine, a well-recognized source of diagnostic error is "premature closure" - when physicians fail to listen to patients long enough to hear the full history, wrongly assuming they already "know" because they've "heard it all before." 

    It takes effort & humility to patiently, intentionally retain an open, beginner's mind, especially for 'experts' burdened by dogma.

     One definition of an expert is one who's incapable of further learning. This patronizing, colonializing hubris keeps governments, religions, professions & other large institutions fossilized decades, if not centuries behind progressive ideas.

      “While religion at its best calls us to a community of the curious and a unity beyond dogma & tribalism; religion at its worst calls us to worship the very things that divide us and to pit people against one another in the name of one fantasy or other.”
       Rami Shapiro. “Holy Rascals. Advice for Spiritual Revolutionaries.” Sounds True, 2017.  

    Dogmatic secular scientism & dogmatic religions are equally captivating, both promising certainty. For both, it's an open & shut case, all other worldviews are fiercely denounced, now adherents can get back to being busy doing stuff, end of discussion, thank you & good night!

      Reality is far too complex, paradoxical, and takes way too much effort for the vast majority to spend a lifetime exploring with an open mind / heart!  

    “The old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching…” Joseph Campbell 

    Increasingly, people are becoming "spiritual revolutionaries, spiritually independent" or "mystics" - no longer followers, and find marching lock-step with any crowd spiritually confining, even suffocating. Their individual ego (small self) is sufficiently secure, so they do not depend on a group ego, a charismatic guru, or an all-powerful separate "other." Nor do they "other" the Divine, but instead experience Oneness with Source. This felt sense is often referred to as "Self" by mystics, Jung, Internal Family Systems, etc. Some of them resonate with the mystical level of some spiritual traditions, which may or may not be one in which we were raised.

    We ALL have firm opinions about people & things, based on minimal or wrong information.
    AND, we ALL consider others with such baseless opinions, to be bigots, red necks, etc.
    So, in the spirit of open-mindedness, I invite you to watch this 68 minute documentary about a couple who spent a very productive lifetime actually being open-minded enough to learn a great deal of valuable, worthwhile information about shamanism - about which our materialist culture only has disparaging innuendo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNloOTQoRzA

    “There is widespread agreement that seven kinds of practices are central & essential for anyone who would live a life to the fullest. These seven practices are:
        1) Living ethically,
        2) Transforming emotions,
        3) Redirecting motivation,
        4) Training attention,
        5) Refining awareness,
        6) Cultivating wisdom,
        7) Serving others.
    These are the seven practices that sages the world over emphasize as central & essential for a full spiritual life. Together they constitute a ‘technology of transcendence’ for awakening our potentials and living life to the fullest. Shamans were the first to develop this art …

    Shamanism can be defined as a family of traditions whose practitioners focus on voluntarily entering altered states of consciousness in which they experience themselves or their spirit(s) interacting with other entities, often by traveling to other realms, in order to serve their community.”
    Roger Walsh MD, PhD. “The World of Shamanism. New Views of an Ancient Tradition.” Llewellyn Publications, 2007.

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell,
don’t go back to sleep!
You have to ask for what you really want,
don’t go back to sleep!
You know, there are those who go back and forth
over the threshold where the two worlds meet,
and the door, it’s always open, and it’s round,
don’t go back to sleep!”

Jalal al-Din Rumi

 

      “Spiritual practices are methods that can begin to soften our stance toward our self, toward life in general, and to open us to what transcends the habitual. They are invitations to become intimate with the wisdom of silence & stillness.”
      Dorothy Hunt. “Ending the Search. From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.” Sounds True, 2018. 

      “Silence is the basis and the background of everything. We are an expression of this primordial silence & stillness. But the habits of our mind overlay this simple truth & keep us from experiencing ourselves as a full-spectrum human being."          Sharon Landrith

 

 

What happened to Love? Or even Decency?

    Executive orders abolishing or reversing any policy that's humane, ethical or simply decent, flow relentlessly, like sewage from a broken main, from this cartoon character. What on earth brought this nightmarish shadow on the U.S., the whole world?
    Such immoral behavior, and support for it, is caused by fear & ignorance about basic human decency, and certainly about evolved human behavior.

    We know that fear can cause the survival or fight, flight, freeze instinct to take over. This primitive instinct can go easily too far, as when during war, soldiers commit barbaric acts, which even in warfare are denounced as "atrocities." Committing atrocities unknowingly inflict "moral injury" on perpetrators, and so they become much more likely to suffer from PTSD.
    "Moral transgression," above and beyond all other dangers & hardships, is ... the most important cause of combat PTSD.
    Jonathan Shay. “Achilles in Vietnam. Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.” Scribner, 1994.

    Even without combat, many experience trauma, do not receive treatment, and thus can be triggered, causing harm to themselves and others. For various reasons, trauma remains largely unrecognized & under treated.

    Not just prisoners, but far too many politicians & their supporters are dysfunctional people coming from dysfunctional homes (inter-generational trauma), who continue to spread their unresolved pain & suffering far & wide.

    First, we MUST recognize, diagnose & treat mental illness to at least the level of "ordinary unhappiness." Electing cartoon characters to the highest office is extremely worrisome & dangerous, and accurately reflects the pathetic psychosocialspiritual level of voters. The 2023 movie, "Lee" starring Kate Winslet (Prime Video), is a powerful true story about what happens when a cartoon character is elected to head a powerful militaristic nation.

    It WILL eventually dawn on us that we're INFINITELY MORE than an isolated, separate, meaningless, worthless lumps of meat accidentally adrift in a massive mindless, soulless, mechanical cosmos. We WILL become increasingly more porous to & intimate with loving cosmic intelligence which is our origin, home & true nature.

    We progressively integrate our true identity with our daily life - with all of its ups, downs, sunny days, cloudy days, summer days, winter days, blissful days, tearful days... Our true identity grounds us more and more securely, like the ballast of a sailboat prevents it from being turned upside down, no matter how strong the stormy winds blow. We come to feel like the stillness & silence in the center of a tornado; the endless, peaceful blue sky, which is unperturbed whether visited by clouds, sunshine, or thunderstorms.
    We gradually recognize that we are, as Rumi writes, "the clear bead at the center," and that deepening realization "changes everything." 

The clear bead at the center
changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.
Some say there’s a window
that opens from one mind to another.
But if there's no wall,
there's no need for fitting a window,
or a latch.
The clear bead at the center
changes everything.

Rumi, translation by Robert Bly & Coleman Barks

 

    “... this peace or quiet joy or sufficiency that is the nature of our being is always there… like the blue sky, it's always present but not always seen.” Rupert Spira

    Rupert Spira (now 64), has been meditating from the age of 17, and a full-time spiritual teacher since 2011, was asked by Tami Simon, "do you always feel in touch with that blue sky nature or do you have times when it’s a really cloudy day today, come on?"

    Rupert Spira: "I have times when it’s a cloudy day, so I would not say I always feel in touch with this background. I would say that I nearly always feel in touch with it. And what I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that fewer & fewer experiences retain the capacity to veil this background of peace & quiet joy. Some experiences do still retain that capacity, so I don’t always feel it, but fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to veil this peace. And when they do, they don’t last long. It’s not like the olden days when a feeling could obscure this background of peace and last for a week or even a day. So, yes, in answer to your question that there are days or times when the gray clouds temporarily cover this, the blue sky of happiness, but it happens less and less often and lasts for less and less time."

    Tami Simon: "And is there something in those moments that’s your personal Rupert Spira go-to move, this is what I do when that happens?"

    Rupert Spira: "Yes. There are two things I do ... One is pause, turn my attention away from whatever it is that is causing the gray clouds in that moment. And if my circumstances permit, I will literally pause and close my eyes and if not, I’ll do it in the midst of my experience and I just go back. Instead of being engaged with the foreground of my experience, the activity, the relationship, the object, whatever it is that is causing the gray seeming to cause the gray clouds. Because the gray clouds are never really caused by something outside of ourself, but whatever it is that seems to be causing the gray clouds, I’ll pause and I’ll go back and I just go back to the fact of being, I just go back to my being. My being and your being and everyone’s being is always at peace. It’s like the screen before it’s colored by the image, it’s colorless, it’s unqualified, it’s always at peace. So that’s one thing I do. It’s a turning away from experience, just a resting, going back to being.
    Now the other thing I do is rather the opposite of that, instead of turning away from whatever seems to be causing the gray clouds, the unhappiness, I’ll turn towards it. And instead of saying no to it, because that’s what causes the sorrow, it’s not the situation itself that is causing the unhappiness, it’s our saying no, I don’t want this. This shouldn’t be happening, I don’t like it. It’s our inner no, or resistance to the experience, that causes the unhappiness. So in that moment, I’ll turn towards the situation, whatever it is, and instead of saying no to it, say yes to it. I just embrace it.
    I just turn towards it fully and open myself to it. And I say to it, you have no power to cause me happiness unless I grant that power to you that the resistance is in me, you and you. That the situation, the person, whatever it is, are not causing the resistance, I’m doing that to myself. And so I positively affirm that this complete openness, this complete yes to my current experience. And in that yes, there can be no suffering because suffering is always no, I don’t like what’s happening. So I do one of those two things. And of course just one more thing to say, Tami, I don’t wonder which of these two approaches to take. It’s a spontaneous thing."
    Interview :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E45Lfv31TMY
    Transcript : https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/the-quiet-joy-of-being/

    The wise approach above is particularly valuable when dealing with those for whom most, if not all, of life is covered by dark clouds. We cannot expect them, or really anyone or anything else, to dependably part, or see past our clouds. These are our clouds. The best we can do is for us to see past our clouds, and share our clear skies with others.

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.”
John O’Donohue's blessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0bg7lNeKY4

Leonard Cohen - "You Have Loved Enough"

Basics

    “What is the greatest wonder in the world?
      Every day men see others called to their death, yet those who remain live as if they were immortal.” The Mahabharata

    “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Krishnamurti

    “Whenever I tried looking outside, instead of in, I’d be crushed by an overwhelming heaviness and sadness until I remembered again. It took quite a while for me to see that most of what goes, among so-called adults, by the name of depression isn’t a disease or defect at all.
    On the contrary, it’s a perfectly natural response to the pull of the divine which is always disturbing and disrupting and disorienting – straining to reorient us towards a totally different dimension. And it’s those who seem best adjusted ((most 'normal')), armed like tragic soldiers with their psychological theories and fanciful facts, who are most helplessly trapped in their strange delusions.”  Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021.

    “Spirituality is the indefinable urge to reach beyond the limits of ordinary human existence that is bounded by unconscious forces and self-interest, and to discover higher values in ourselves and to live them consistently in our relationships and roles. It involves developing practices that aid us in rising and expanding, perhaps beyond the merely good to the transcendent, in the process of looking inwards rather than outwards for our own morality and guidance. Above all, it means becoming a more loving and compassionate human being, in thought, word and deed.” Maya Spencer MD “What is spirituality? A personal exploration.” 2012. https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/what-is-spirituality-maya-spencer-x.pdf?sfvrsn=f28df052_2

     “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” Jean-Paul Sartre

    “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Rumi

     “I can nourish myself on nothing but truth.” St. Therese of Lisieux

    “There is a voice that doesn’t have words. Listen.” Rumi

    There have always been among us people who perceive much more & process what they sense far more deeply than the average person. "Sensitive - The Untold Story" a 2015 documentary on Prime suggests that about 20% of people (and over 100 species of animals) fit this category. Artists, serious meditators, mystics, saints & other spiritually-inclined folks may also overlap with this 'highly sensitive people' (HSP) category.
    An important brain function is as a reducing valve to prevent us from being overwhelmed by the shear volume of data surrounding us. This appears to be diminished in HSP, and the resulting frequent overwhelm may inspire them to be more curious & deeply introspective.

    “To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to deceive oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.” Nisargadatta Maharaj

    “Our yearning for Truth actually comes from Truth.” Adyashanti

    “As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.” Nisargadatta Maharaj 

    “The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.” Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Even if death were to fall on you today like lightning,

You must be ready to die without sadness and regret,

Without any residue of clinging for what is left behind,

Remaining in the cognition of the absolute view,

You should leave this life like an eagle,

Soaring up into the blue sky.”

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

 

Leonard Cohen - In My Secret Life (Live in London)

Saying YES! to EVERYTHING!

    “Contemplation is being open to all of the reality we can stand.” Richard Rohr

    YES. AND we're more deeply conditioned than we realize, to quickly, instinctively say NO! to anything unpleasant, uncomfortable, painful, distressing, and even 'different' than what we're used to! A LOT of today's reality is far from likeable and very difficult to accept! So mostly unconsciously, we tend to shrink back & shrivel up, further & further away from the full spectrum of reality.

    “The smart way to keep people passive & obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” Noam Chomsky, “How the World Works”

    A rigid defensive posture - whether self & or externally imposed - imprisons us in a small, narrow, constricting, supposedly 'safe' box. 'Ordinary unhappiness' or much worse, is the inevitable result. We feel trapped, like a caterpillar stuck in a cocoon. Fearful defensiveness easily turns into offensiveness, and much worse - the violent polarization in politics, race, religion, social media, etc & the endless slaughter of wars that we witness on the news daily.
    Brian McLaren's 45-minute overview from a Developmental Psychology / Mystical Christian perspective is imho excellent : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TrhL8VOUB0 .
    Kelly Noonan's 2017 (1hr 46min) documentary "Heal" on Netflix is also imho very applicable & well worth watching : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5239942/ 

    “Of all the ways you can limit yourself, your own self-definition is the most powerful.” Michael Crichton

    "Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way - in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is limited to the old." Stephen Levine

    By saying YES! to ALL of life's 10,000 joys AND 10,000 sorrows we free ourselves, spread our wings, and fly!

    Mindfulness practice - and really all deep spiritual practice - is about "cultivating a certain kind of intimacy with the core of our being."
Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD
    Gradually we learn to practice remembering, feeling, recognizing & re-connecting with who / what we can sense we are in the depths of our being – our true self – love.

    "Wisdom comes when we live from the heart. It’s the recognition that love is the only power that is moving any of this." Jac O’Keeffe

    “A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web ‘God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father,’ but it can be known only as love.” Joan Z. Borysenko PhD

    THIS is the mystics' level of consciousness, expressed in Rumi's
"The Guest House" :

"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."

     “I share poetry when speaking about mystery, because as a great poet said, ‘You can’t get the news from poetry, but men and women die every day from lack of what is found there.’
    Poetry connects us to the mystery. This is in the same spirit as Buddhist texts that begin with the words, ‘O Nobly Born, remember who you really are, you are the sons and daughters of the awakened ones.’ You are in the lineage of those who have awakened before you. Look directly at the mystery of love and existence. It is your birthright to remember freedom and awakening.
    ‘If I had influence with the good fairy who’s supposed to preside over the birth of all children, I should ask her gift to each child in the world a sense of wonder so indestructible it would last throughout their life.’ Rachel Carson
    This is one of the gifts of poetry. We can meditate to quiet the mind, we can calm ourselves, we can de-stress, and we can see in new ways. And with this mindful presence, poetry invites a sense of wonder and mystery, and with that, an opening to love.”
    Jack Kornfield https://jackkornfield.com/poetry-of-awakening-navigating-the-great-mystery/?mc_cid=f635f4b32e&mc_eid=cd718e6a49

 

      "Imagine love wants to see
your true face
    Imagine that nothing matters
except love
    Imagine love as you
    Imagine love as everything
you’ve ever given attention to
    Imagine love abides in difference
    Imagine love as a force
that gives us meaning
    Imagine love abhors a vacuum
    Imagine love wants to know love
    Imagine everything matters
because love is real
    Imagine love is a power
uncontainable & inconceivable
    Imagine love as language, as selfless action,
as water, as purslane, as voles, as dragonflies, as wind
    Try to imagine a love
able to rise whole into thin air,
invisible to our eyes
holding our entire awareness
on the thin new blade
of a brightness soon to come
    Imagine the imperfections of love
that love adores
    Imagine love imagining
your radical truth &
trusting your courage
your vision
your journey
to recognize
your self
in vastness."              Poem by Qayyum Johnson

 
        “Your task is not to seek for love,
         but merely to seek & find all of the barriers
         within yourself that you have built against it.” Helen Schueman

     More about love : http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/11/calling-all-wise-elders.html

Yuval Noah Harari, "What it Means to be Human" (in 3 minutes!)

 

Knockin on Heaven's Door

    Very recently, two of my fittest friends, both life-long athletes, both in their late 70s, came very close to death with pneumonia. Thanks to ready access to the wonders of modern medicine, both now are recovering - one at home, the other still in hospital. "Knockin on heaven's door" for some, suggests closeness to "the end" - perhaps imagining concrete barriers at the end of a "dead end" street. But Zen talks about a "gateless gate" - a koan or open question (transcending the left-hemisphere) to ponder deeply, until - like plainly visible, tangible water at 100°C suddenly transforms into subtle vapor - everything changes ...

    "Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” Anthony de Mello SJ

     Everything is driven by the magnetic pull toward Oneness, our true Self, and this we sense with our right-hemisphere-dominant consciousness. BUT when we're out of touch with our true nature, then we're driven by LACK - gnawing frustration & dissatisfaction which activates our left-hemisphere-dominant mindset, the function of which is exclusively to help us survive & reproduce - so we try to grab, hold & keep 'things, people & experiences.' This (sadly common) obsessive self-centeredness invariably fails to provide peace & lasting happiness: http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/12/towards-intimacy.html
     Iain McGilchrist spent 30 years of meticulous research, study, writing & speaking about the crucial importance of right-hemisphere dominance which includes a useful subservient, supportive role for the left-hemisphere. He put all the ducks ("parts") in order, to satisfy the most fastidious, materialist, skeptical of linear thinkers so that they might have a glimpse of "the whole" in two masterworks:
    Iain McGilchrist "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" in 2019.
    Iain McGilchrist "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" in 2021.

    “Since 2006, Jeffery A. Martin PhD and his team have spearheaded the largest global scientific effort to understand forms of human experience such as: awakening, enlightenment, non-duality, God consciousness, the peace that passeth understanding, unity consciousness, persistent mystical experience, and hundreds of similar others. Academically, we refer to these as types of Ongoing and Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience. Publicly, we most typically call them Fundamental Wellbeing.”
    Dr. Jeffery A. Martin. “How to Safely, Reliably, and Rapidly Reach Fundamental Wellbeing: Lessons from the Largest Scientific Project Ever Assembled on Awakening, Enlightenment, Non-duality, Unity Consciousness, and Other Forms of Fundamental Wellbeing.” Integration Press, 2020. (free e-book)
    “If you stop and truly examine the average person’s life, it becomes obvious that it comes down to tradeoffs that are being made to mitigate their fundamental discontentment. It’s the foundation that all of their experience is built upon, and they spend a great deal of time & energy trying to pacify it. People will do almost anything to get as much distance from it as possible.
    Sometimes they make the decision that the best option is pleasure in the moment. Other times, they might sacrifice for what they perceive to be a more substantial or durable gain in the future. Every moment involves a carefully calculated move in an overall strategy to minimize fundamental discontent.
    Finders have this discontentment replaced with a deep-seated foundational, inner peace. Just like the discontentment is for others, this peace simply seems to be there. However, also just like discontentment, there are things that can pull it closer or create some distance to it. The inner game for Finders is about this peace, though some miss this because of their former habit of focusing on & managing discontentment.”
    Dr. Jeffery A. Martin. “The Finders.” Integration Press, 2019.

    Michael A. Singer is imho a wise man with 50 years of deep spiritual practice, and an excellent communicator. His regular talks are freely available. Here are the closing 3 minutes of (at this time) his most recent talk: “It's All Energy” - Thursday March 7, 2024 - https://tou.org/talks/
    “‘Are you willing to let go of your self?’ … But you’re just lost in your self, aren’t you? If you think that things should be the way you want, you’re lost in your self. ‘Why is it raining on my birthday?' ‘Oh my God, there you go again. Why did it have to rain today?’ ...
    That’s ego. It’s not just people who are boisterous who have big old egos. That’s ego, you think it’s you. You look at it all through the veil of ‘you.’
    The great ones do not do that. … they look at things from the center of Consciousness, and realize everybody else is the same as me - it’s the same Consciousness, but it’s looking at something different. And we’ve all had different experiences. Yogananda, an enlightened being, used to say, ‘But by God’s grace, there goes myself.’ That’s how he looked at wrong in this world. Had I not been brought up by my mother, in my tradition, in this, & that food to eat, and so on. How dare you judge somebody else. And Christ is the same way, ‘May you without sin, throw the first stone.’ Wake up!
    These are the deep traditions. They’re about stepping out of your self enough to realize we’re all in here, but we’re lost in the stuff the psyche built over the course of our lives.
    Next time you feel low in energy, just remember who you are - five hundred trillion times the brightness of the sun. And you can’t even see it. One star in the spattered sky, and that’s what it really is. And they’re everywhere. And that’s who you are. 

    But you’ve limited yourself. You’ve limited yourself to stare down at this thing. And the trouble is, if you don’t get what you want, you’re not comfortable. A heroin addict once said that to me. ‘You know I’m much nicer when I get a hit. And I’m really strung out and terrible when I don’t.’ Well, okay, fine. That’s not a nice thing to talk about is it? But it’s the same thing. You’re addicted to your psyche. You’re addicted to the patterns that you have within your mind. All right.
    The beauty of it all is that you are a very great being. And you’re capable of returning to that state, gradually, by letting go of staring at yourself. The more you let go of staring at yourself, the more you let go of getting all caught up in ("preferences") what you want & what you don’t want, what you like & what you don’t like.

    And just start honoring & respecting the flow of life, and serving it to the best of your ability. … You don’t interact with life to make it do what you want. You see something happening, and you feel a reaction – let go of the reaction, and then see if there’s something you can do to help! How nice would it be if every single moment, instead of asking, ‘What I want & how do I get it?’ you were asking, ‘How can I help this moment? How can I serve?’ ("Nurturing") Whoa. That’s the beauty of the path!” Michael A. Singer “It's All Energy” - Thursday March 7, 2024 - https://tou.org/talks/

"At times we are hidden, at times revealed.
We are Muslims, Christians, Jews, of any race.
Until our hearts are shaped to hold all hearts,
We show these different faces to the world."
Jalaludin Rumi 

 

Knockin on Heaven's Door

This version was recorded in memory of the Dunblane Massacre 13 March 1996, where 16 children and one adult were killed. A new verse was written, and the children who sing the chorus are brothers and sisters of the victims. The song was released 9 December 1996. Proceeds went to charities for children. Ted Christopher - vocals, Mark Knopfler - guitar.